The real impact of viruses

Monday, 5 January 2004, 6:57 PM EST

It seems that hardly a week goes by when computer viruses aren't making headline news. The release of the SQL Slammer and Sobig worms last January, followed by the MSBlast.exe worm in August, graphically illustrate how the nature of these attacks is ever increasing.

They also show that, although viruses have been around for over 20 years, computer users generally are still unable to ensure that they have enough immunity to resist infection.

In fact, in many cases the computer world had weeks and sometimes months of advance warning about vulnerabilities, yet the latest attacks have caused havoc for companies and consumers worldwide.

Spotlight

Microsoft Edge, the new browser in Windows 10, represents a significant increase in the security over Internet Explorer. However, there are also new potential threat vectors that arenít present in older versions.

35 percent of employees would sell information on company patents, financial records and customer credit card details if the price was right. This illustrates the growing importance for organizations to deploy data loss prevention strategies.

Sun Tzu's writings have been studied throughout the ages by professional militaries and can used to not only answer the question of whether or not we are in a cyberwar, but how one can fight a cyber-battle.

Infosec consultant Paul Moore came up with a working solution to thwart a type of behavioral profiling. The result is a Chrome extension called Keyboard Privacy, which prevents profiling of users by the way they type by randomizing the rate at which characters reach the DOM.